Under Cover Part 32

"Oh, Lambart," she said reprovingly, "how careless of you! Have you spilt it all?"

Lambart examined its interior with a butler's gravity.

"I'm afraid I have, miss," he admitted.

"I think Mr. Denby went into the library," she said, knowing that the door behind which someone--probably he--was hiding, led to that room.

Hearing her, Denby knew he must not be discovered and retreated through the empty library into a small smoking-room into which Lambart did not penetrate. The man returned to Miss Cartwright, his errand unaccomplished. "Mr. Denby is not there," he said.

"Then I will give him the pouch when I see him," she said, "and, Lambart, you need not tell him I am here."

As soon as he was gone, she ran to the window, her face no longer strained but almost joyous, and when she was a.s.sured that none watched her, lowered the curtain as a signal.

Taylor must have been close at hand, so promptly did he respond to her summons.

"Well, have you got him?" he cried sharply as he entered. "Where is he--where's the necklace?"

"You were wrong," she said triumphantly, "there is no necklace. I knew I was right."

"You're crazy," he retorted brutally.

"You said it was in the tobacco-pouch," she reminded him, "and I've searched and it isn't there at all."

"You're trying to protect him," Taylor snarled. "You're stuck on him, but you can't lie to me and get away with it."

"No, no, no," she protested. "Look, here's the very pouch, and there's no necklace in it."

"How did you get hold of it?" he snapped.

It was a moment of bitter failure for the deputy-surveyor. The sign for which he had waited patiently, and eagerly, too, despite his impa.s.sive face, was, after all, nothing but a token of disappointment. He had hoped, now that events had given him a hold over Miss Cartwright, to find her well-fitted for a sort of work that would have been peculiarly useful to his service. But her ready credulity in another man's honesty proved one of two things. Either that she lacked the intuitive knowledge to be a useful tool or else that she was deliberately trying to deceive him. But none had seen Daniel Taylor show that he realized himself in danger of being beaten.

"He left it lying on the table," she a.s.sured him eagerly.

Taylor's sneer was not pleasant to see.

"Oh, he left it on the table, did he?" he scoffed. "Well, of course there's no necklace in it then. Don't you see you've let him suspect you, and he's just trying to bluff you."

"It isn't that," she a.s.serted. "He hasn't got it, I tell you."

"I know he has," the implacable Taylor retorted, "and you've got to find out this very night where it is. You'll probably have to search his room."

She shrank back at the very thought of it. "I couldn't," she cried. "Oh, I couldn't!"

"Yes you could, and you will," he said, in his truculent tone. "And if you land him, use the same signal, pull down the shade in his room.

We'll be watching, and I've found a way to get there from the balcony."

"I can't," the girl cried in desperation. "I've done what you asked. I won't try to trap an innocent man."

He looked at her threateningly. "Oh, you won't, eh? Well, you will. I've been pretty nice to you, but I'm sick of it. You'll go through for me, and you'll go through right. I've had your sister followed--see here, look at this--" He showed her the fake warrant Duncan had prepared at his bidding. "This is a warrant for her arrest, and unless you land that necklace to-night, she'll be in the Tombs in the morning."

"Not that, not that?" she begged, covering her face with her hands.

"It's up to you," he retorted, a smile of satisfaction lighting up his face. He could see that he would be able to hold Amy's warrant over her head whenever he chose. She was beaten.

"But what can I do?" she said piteously. "What can I do?"

"I'll tell you," he said less harshly, "you're a good-looking girl; well, make use of your good looks--get around him, jolly him, get him stuck on you. Make him take you into his confidence. He'll fall for it.

The wisest guys are easy when you know the way."

"Very well," she said, brightening. It seemed to her that no better way could be devised than to convince Taylor he was wrong. "I will get around him; I will get his confidence. I'll prove it to you, and I'll save him."

"But you don't have to give him your confidence, remember," Taylor warned her. "Don't give him the least tip-off, understand. If you can get him out in the garden, I'll take a chance he has the necklace on him. We'll nail him there. And don't forget," he added significantly, "that I've got a little doc.u.ment here with your sister's name on it.

There's somebody coming," he whispered, and silently let himself out into the garden.

It was Denby who came in. "h.e.l.lo," he said, "not dancing, then?"

"h.e.l.lo," she said, in answer to his greeting. "I don't like dancing in August."

"I'm fortunate to find you alone," he said. "You can't imagine how delightful it is to see you again."

Her manner was particularly charming, he thought, and it gave him a pang when a suspicion of its cause pa.s.sed over his mind. There had been other women who had sought to wheedle from him secrets that other men desired to know, but they were other women--and this was Ethel Cartwright.

"You don't look as though it is," she said provocatively.

He made an effort to appear as light-hearted as she.

"But I am," he a.s.sured her. "It is delightful to see you again."

"It's no more delightful than for me to see you," she returned.

"Really?" he returned. "Isn't it curious that when you like people you may not see them for a year, but when you do, you begin just where you left off."

"Where did we leave off?" she demanded with a smile.

"Why--in Paris," he said with a trace of embarra.s.sment. "You don't want to forget our Paris, I hope?"

"Never," she cried, enthusiastically. "It was there we found that we really were congenial. We are, aren't we?"

"Congenial?" he repeated. "We're more than that--we're--"

She interrupted him. "And yet, somehow, you've changed a lot since Paris."

"For better or for worse?" he asked.

She shook her head. "For worse."

He looked at her reproachfully. "Oh, come now, Miss Cartwright, be fair!"

"In Paris you used to trust me," she said.